Part 25 (2/2)
”That girl.”
”Turn her loose. That's easy and reputable.”
”I'll have to, I presume; but she ought to be punished.”
”If you'll think less about punishment, revenge and getting even with everybody and everything, you'll soon begin to prosper.”
Hamilton winced, but smiled as one quite sure of himself.
Jean followed the soldier to a rickety log pen on the farther side of the stockade, where he found the prisoner restlessly moving about like a bird in a rustic cage. It had no comforts, that gloomy little room.
There was no fireplace, the roof leaked, and the only furniture consisted of a bench to sit on and a pile of skins for bed. Alice looked charmingly forlorn peeping out of the wraps in which she was bundled against the cold, her hair fluffed and rimpled in s.h.i.+ning disorder around her face.
The guard let Jean in and closed the door, himself staying outside.
Alice was as glad to see the poor lad as if they had been parted for a year. She hugged him and kissed his drawn little face.
”You dear, good Jean!” she murmured, ”you did not forget me.”
”I brought you something,” he whispered, producing the book.
Alice s.n.a.t.c.hed it, looked at it, and then at Jean.
”Why, what did you bring this for? you silly Jean! I didn't want this.
I don't like this book at all. It's hateful. I despise it. Take it back.”
”There's something in it for you, a paper with writing on it; Lieutenant Beverley wrote it on there. It's shut up between the leaves about the middle.”
”Sh-s-s.h.!.+ not so loud, the guard'll hear you,” Alice breathlessly whispered, her whole manner changing instantly. She was trembling, and the color had been whisked from her face, as the flame from a candle in a sudden draught.
She found the note and read it a dozen times without a pause, her eyes leaping along the lines back and forth with pathetic eagerness and concentration. Presently she sat down on the bench and covered her face with her hands. A tremor first, then a convulsive sobbing, shook her collapsed form. Jean regarded her with a drolly sympathetic grimace, elevating his long chin and letting his head settle back between his shoulders.
”Oh, Jean, Jean!” she cried at last, looking up and reaching out her arms; ”O Jean, he is gone, gone, gone!”
Jean stepped closer to her while she sobbed again like a little child.
She pulled him to her and held him tightly against her breast while she once more read the note through blinding tears. The words were few, but to her they bore the message of desolation and despair. A great, haunting, hollow voice in her heart repeated them until they echoed from vague distance to distance.
It was written with a bit of lead on the half of a mildewed fly-leaf torn from the book:
”Dear Alice:
”I am going away. When you read this, think of me as hurrying through the wilderness to reach our army and bring it here. Be brave, as you always have been; be good, as you cannot help being; wait and watch for me; love me, as I love you. I will come. Do not doubt it, I will come, and I will crush Hamilton and his command. Courage, Alice dear; courage, and wait for me.
”Faithfully ever, ”Beverley.”
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